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Your last post seems to have just made a valid point to the Regal and Carmike theaters of Decatur that they no longer need to consider putting in variable masking, for people (including yourself - the one person who complains constantly about it) will continue to patronize the establishments.

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Sadly, that's true. (Actually, it's the Regal theatres in Huntsville (not Decatur) that have nonvariable masking. The Carmike in Decatur has variable masking but bad presentation qualtiy, The Regal in Decatur is excellent.) Even though I patronize the theatres I don't like, I do it to try to keep the number of visits to each theatre relatively evenly distributed. Most showings I see at the two Huntsville Regals are on opening week of a movie, which are typically in the few large auditoriums that do have variable masking.

About the postings and the percentages of people who patronize Huntsville theatres: I would be surprised if there were a single person other than myself from the Huntsville area that was registered with film-tech. There may be a few people that occasionally look around film-tech from Huntsville since I link to film-tech from one page of my site.

Sure, I complain a lot about these problems because Huntsville seems to be one of the few cities with the problem. I've seen a few posts from other people mentioning being in "1.85-only" or "2.00-only" auditoriums, but they seem pretty scarce. I'd be willing to bet that before I started posting here about those problems, most if not all of the higher ups at Regal didn't even know that the Huntsville theatres they got from Cobb had this problem.

I've communiated with two of the higher-ups at Regal. One, who no longer appears to be with the company, responded to a letter I wrote on February 9, 1998. In that letter (written before I had as much technical knowledge as I now do), I had mentioned a string of major problems at one particular location, as well as the aspect ratio problem. He said that the aspect ratio problems were "inherent in the theatres when we acquired them" and indicated no inclination to fix them. The second higher-up at Regal that I communicated with was here on film-tech a few months ago. We had some email communication which seemed positive. From that communication, I got the feeling that the problems would likely (although not definitely) be fixed soon. For all I know, the problems may have been fixed in the past few weeks and the higher-ups may be laughing about me not yet knowing (although I think this scenario is very unlikely).

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(Highly doubtful. The odds are much greater that he will learn to detest everything you say and hope you never visit their theaters again. After all, if these two theaters had adjustable masking, would you patronize them enough over what you do now to justify the expense? It's not just hanging some black cloth up. It's new lenses, aperture plates, labor, etc to make it happen.)

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They probably do detest me. How many customers post reviews of all the showings on the WWW? It's not exactly a likable thing, unless a theatre is doing a really good job (like two theatres in my area are). [This is why I thought implementing such a thing here on film-tech would be a bad idea] If the problem gets fixed, it won't be because I want it fixed. It will be either because more customers complain about it, the studios or distributors start giving them problems about it (not likely), or the higher-ups get tired of the negative publicity on the WWW. I'll bet most companies who get negative product reviews in Consumer Reports magazine don't like Consumer Reports magazine! How many students who get bad grades they don't think they deserve like the teacher that gave them to them? It's not a likable thing, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if I were strongly detested by several of the local managers and the higher-ups at both Regal and Carmike. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if I went to see a movie at one of the theatres I've given rather negative reviews and not be allowed in.

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so if in the end this idea is a "go", get everyone you know to report their findings with these two theaters positive or negative and see if it can make a difference.

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You're right. This would definitely work. Getting it to happen is another story. I'd probably have to register a domain name that everyone can remember easily, and be more aggressive about advertising it (which is a problem since I have put no money into the site (except for the costs of seeing the movies, most of which I'd probably have seen anyway, even if I didn't run the site). I really don't want to have to put ads on the site, and prefer for it to be a content-only site. I don't want just anyone to be able to submit reviews because getting people to be as objective as I am is difficult, and getting them trained to recognize various problems is difficult as well. Having multiple reviewers that "grade like I do" would be the ideal solution, but if I do go with multiple reviewers (the software already has the ability to handle it) I'll likely have to settle for higher margins of error in the ratings (due to subjectivity and politics that will slip in). I think just getting more people to use the site for their showtimes is a big start toward making the rest of it more popular, since most people use it to see what new movies are coming out and what's showing at various theatres.

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Evans A Criswell
Huntsville-Decatur Movie Theatre Info Site

I've gotten pretty good responses to the cards in the lobbies and even "send a message to the president" boxes on web pages. I don't even attempt to talk to people at the theatres, as they usually look at me like I'm some kind of alien. Try getting information from an AMC manager on whether a film is playing in 8-channel SDDS or not...the group of "suits" I ran into didn't even know what 8-channel was!

(I have noticed one thing about letters to chains. I usually get a response to the first letter, but after that, letters get ignored. Guess I get put into the "crank" file.)

Recently, I detected a problem in the sound at a local Imax theater. I knew I would just get blown off if I talked to anyone at the theater, so I contacted the company president via the web-page. I explained the problem (reversed l-r channels) and gave situations where the problem occured. I heard back in just a couple of days and they DID fix the problem. If I had just posted this problem here in a review, I doubt the company would ever see it.

We can post all the reviews we want...the places that care about presentation will keep doing good presentations, and the junkhouses will still scratch films on the first showing and not care.

One thing we could do (in addition to a lists of technical contacts at the various chains) would be to list the films that have the 1-800-PHONE-THX at the end. If I knew ahead of time which films have this, I'll pay a bit more attention.

I vote no on theater reviews.

I provided a link to the TAP Hotline, which lists current films that TAP is monitoring. Here it is again:
http://www.THX.com/professional_services/tap_800.html

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As of 2000, there were 6,571 indoor theatre sites and 408 drive-ins, for a total of 6,979 theatre sites.

Some theatre websites do have a way of letting the management know of any presentation problems, and most give a listing of key personnel in the theatre company.

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion